BANKS TELLS TRACY SMITH, “I AM A CHARACTER ACTOR STUCK IN A LEADING LADY’S BODY”

Caption (L-R) Elizabeth Banks, Tracy Smith

            Actress Elizabeth Banks has made a name for herself in Hollywood for turning small parts in big movies into memorable roles in films such as “The Hunger Games” and “The 40-Year-Old Virgin.” Banks tells CBS SUNDAY MORNING correspondent Tracy Smith she has fun in those roles, but she would also like to do more romantic comedies.

“Here’s my problem,” Banks tells Smith, “I am a character actor stuck in a leading lady’s body. The industry keeps sticking me in the character roles. It’s a lot of fun to play those roles because I get to have a lot of leeway to do whatever the heck I want and I have a lot of fun with it.”

Smith travels with Banks to her hometown of Pittsfield, Mass., and talks with her father to get a sense of what Elizabeth was like as a child. As for her adult life, Banks speaks candidly about her career, her new son and her husband Max Handelman.

Banks says once she settled on acting, she thought she was going to be like Julia Roberts and star in romantic comedies. But she’s “disappointed that opportunity hasn’t presented itself” in the way she thought it would. “I feel like I haven’t really had an opportunity to shine in what I do best,” she says.

Along the way, however, Banks has done some risqué scenes. She tells Smith she has fewer inhibitions as she’s gotten older. “As a young actress, I was so much more concerned about it and insecure about it,” she says, adding that’s changed with experience. “I’ve been naked in front of a lot of people now. I mean, that’s just part of the business.”

Banks isn’t concerned about her son seeing her body of work down the road, including an infamous nude hot tub scene from “The 40-Year-Old Virgin.” “He’s going to see a lot of worse things in his time, isn’t he?” she tells Smith. “I’d rather he watch that than the news from 9/11 or Afghanistan – it’s a big, bad ugly world out there, kids. Mommy had fun in a bathtub once. That’s okay.”

Smith’s full interview will be broadcast Sept. 30 on CBS SUNDAY MORNING WITH CHARLES OSGOOD (9:00 AM, ET) on the CBS Television Network. Rand Morrison is the executive producer.

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